Reflection 33 of 52: Can people change their lazy voice?
August 18, 2014
I was
attending a webinar last week and got totally sidetracked by the voice of one
of the presenters. The woman sounded sleepy and it had me nodding off after the
first two minutes. I was keenly interested in the data (social media) and I
wanted to buy the product (monitoring service). Now I am debating on going with
someone else or, at minimum, paying on a monthly basis in case they go out of
business.
I am
accustomed to casual presentations, particularly in this field and quite like
conversational nature of online programming. This was not that. This was a case
of “lazy presenter”. Lazy, by her
lack of interest in her own topic, she read most of it. Lazy, by the shortening
of her words - cuz, gonna, goin ta, etc. Lazy, by starting each sentence with "so"... Sooooo irritating, that I started
counting the so’s.
I don’t
blame her for this bad presentation. I expect she thinks it is hip to sound
like you don’t give a rats ass about your audience. And, this is not an age
thing. My 24 year-old colleague was completely put off as well. I expect this
presenter does not get much guidance on her performance.
I get the
feeling this company does not think it is important to make a great impression
via the webinar – they started 10 minutes late, sent a message with a winky
smiley face to tell us that, then it was bumpy with a couple of false starts
and lack of smooth transitions. We could hear them chortling about the problems
as they tried to solve them.
They also
prompted us many times to tweet or share the information… over selling, for
sure. They offered a percentage off the price but we had to buy within two hours. It made me wonder if they were desperate. Based on this public face of the
organization, coupled with an aggressive sales pitch, I suspect they may go
bust. If you don’t care about your outward communication, your customers and
potential customers feel it. I know my expectations are high and good
communication is my passion but I don’t think I am alone.
I don’t
believe I would have been so critical if Ms. Lazy Voice had been more energetic
or seemed prepared. I expect they spent a chunk of change getting us to the
webinar, only to turn us off in the first 15 minutes. And, I like webinars.
Here is
my easy, peasy fix for people to change their lazy voice on webinars or
anywhere else.
- Prepare. Don't read your infographic or visual materials.
- Stand up and breathe. Sitting takes away all your energy.
- Don’t try to be hip or cool. People can smell that insincerity. Just be you.
- Take time to pronounce words fully. Not finishing off the word makes you sound stupid.
- Practice beforehand. Make sure your technology works. Nobody comes to watch your mouse arrow float around indiscriminately. Particularly when we are buying a technological product.
- Rehearse your points to avoid over using filler words like “so”. Once in a while is okay but eight times in five minutes?!
People
can change their lazy voices, with the smallest amount of effort.
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